Can love conquer the class divide? Yes, says a Sloane Ranger with her lover the builder

He has relatives in Belmarsh Prison, hers are courtiers to the Queen

Many people assume that Britain is no longer bound by class — but when it comes to dating and marriage, most of us still choose a mate from a similar background. And I know from personal experience precisely why: because dating across the class divide is hard work.

My boyfriend is a Cockney builder from a working-class background, and I was born into a wealthy upper middle-class family. Our backgrounds couldn’t be more polarised. I have cousins who are courtiers to the Queen: he has close relatives in Belmarsh Prison. Our relationship has been tumultuous, and I firmly believe that most of our ups and downs have been due to our opposing backgrounds.

In the beginning, our differences were a source of fascination. He loved my posh voice, and his practical skills made me swoon. In those halcyon early days, Al wooed me with his charm, good looks and winning way with a power drill. The dripping taps in my flat were fixed, a wood-burning stove installed, and peeling wallpaper quickly replaced.

Me and my (very handy) man: Julia Stephenson and builder Al

Once, when all our lights mysteriously short-circuited, he whizzed up to the loft and fixed a pipe that was dripping onto our fuse box. It’s marvellous. I can remember thinking: Who needs the Milk Tray man?

I was particularly impressed because the men in my family can barely replace a fuse. A public school education, followed by years at university studying something totally useless like sociology or media studies, leaves the average middle-class man sorely lacking in common sense and poorly equipped to deal with DIY.

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I once dated a Marquis who was paralysed with horror when water began to pour through the ceiling of his dilapidated country house. ‘Shouldn’t we turn off the stopcock?’ I cried. ‘I have no idea where it is!’ he replied hopelessly, as plaster crashed about our feet.

Years of exposure to effete and
impractical Old Etonians, bankers and aristocrats left me fantasising
about dating a builder in the same way that some girls dream of dating a
footballer or a Prince. When I
met Al at a Buddhist group, it was like a breath of fresh air. The
chemistry between us was electric — so much so that I brushed aside my
initial reservations. Soon we fell madly in love.

Contrast: Julia says her idea of heaven is an early night and a good book, but she was attracted by Al's hard-drinking, hard-living lifestyle

Then, the ups and downs were edgy and exciting. My idea of heaven is an early night and a good book, but I was attracted by his hard-drinking, hard-living lifestyle. There was a whiff of danger about him that I found intoxicating.

He was the life and soul, could party until 4am, then get up early with no ill-effects. As you can imagine, socialising together was — and still is — a challenge. Al has a big crowd of local builders he can spend whole days with in his local pub — their friendship revolving around beer and football. I’ve met several, but spending more than five minutes discussing Arsenal’s prospects makes me faint with boredom.

Attempts to mix our friends have not always been successful. Soon after we began going out, I was invited to a smart Save Tibet charity event at Joanna Lumley’s house. Together with my friend Hugo, an old
Etonian barrister, I had arranged to pick up Al from outside his local
pub so we could drive there together. Hugo was immaculate in a suit.
Beside him, Al, wearing a horrible dust-stained donkey jacket (which I
have since thrown away), seemed diminished and scruffy.

WHO KNEW?One in five women now has a partner who earns less than her, compared to just one in 25 in the Sixties

The moment Al opened his mouth, I could feel Hugo flinch. ‘I can’t see what you see in him — can’t we drop him off at the next pub?’ he mumbled snobbishly under his breath.

‘It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him,’ wrote George Bernard Shaw in 1916 — and, sadly, this is still true today.

As anyone who has watched David Cameron will know, Etonians are the most confident, bombastic men in the universe. As Hugo and I rabbited on, excluding Al with our chatter, I could feel Al growing restive and angry in the back of the BMW.

‘Look, if you don’t want me here, just
say it, and I’ll be off!’ he snarled. ‘I didn’t want to come to your
bloody party anyway.’ But once we
arrived, the tables were swiftly turned. He strode confidently up to
Joanna Lumley, fetched her a fresh drink and charmed her with his
Jack-the-Lad patter.

She thought
he was marvellous. And so did I. Hugo and his OE cronies — who I think,
because of their single-sex education, are secretly terrified of women —
hovered impotently on the sidelines.

Approval: According to Julia, Joanna Lumley thought Al was marvelous

Al won over all my female friends that night. They think he’s wonderful. They’ve all admitted they fantasise about their builders, but most wouldn’t dream of a relationship with one.

My girlfriend Miranda from Hampshire actually fulfilled her long-held fantasy and had a passionate affair with her builder — which she ended, despite their amazing sex life. I told her she was mad.

‘I was heartbroken but our backgrounds are just too different,’ she explained. ‘I could never take him to dinner parties because he holds his fork like a pencil.’ And even though she is now unhappily married to an Old Harrovian banker, she still doesn’t regret her decision. That’s the British class system for you.

Thankfully my family are not remotely snobbish — unlike my friends — and took Al on face value. Besides, I’d been single so long they were happy I’d found anyone at all. Similarly, Al’s family have welcomed me with open arms. They are enviably close and meet every weekend.

Next weekend, they are all planning to go caravanning, and there was some disappointment when Al said that he’d be going without me.

‘It’s nothing personal,’ he explained, ‘but Julia would rather shoot herself than be stuck in a caravan on the Isle of Sheppey for the weekend.’ At times like that I am racked with guilt, and fear they must think me dreadfully pampered. He may not whisk me off on luxurious weekend breaks, but there are other benefits. I have discovered that dating a working-class man is very good for the figure.

Al likes to eat very early — at about 6pm, in front of EggHeads on the telly. It’s a state of affairs which would horrify Miranda and Hugo, but I think it’s marvellous, as eating late piles on the pounds. Since we have been together, I have lost a stone.

Generally, Al is better at adapting to my world than I am to his. He loves a posh do and a spot of culture. I was just about to turn down an invitation to Glyndebourne (frankly, I’d rather boil my own head than listen to hours of screeching) when he insisted we go.

The noise was so dreadful I had to
sit in the lavatory for most of it, but the pain was compensated with
the joy I got from pulling into the car park next to my friend’s swanky
Lexus with blacked-out windows, in our rackety old white van with its
bumper strapped on with gaffer tape.

It
was the scruffiest vehicle in the car park — something that filled me
with an unaccountable sense of pride. These days, I take a delight in
cocking a snook at a world which is obsessed with material possessions
and superficial appearances.

Another job done: Julia relaxes while boyfriend Al puts his skills to use

Some
differences are hard to overcome, though. When I mentioned Al and I
were having problems, a friend recommended we try her Relate therapist.
To my surprise, Al was happy to attend regular weekly sessions for eight
weeks, where we talked through our difficulties.

After each session we felt happier and understood each other better.For example, in my family we only raise our voices about once every ten years — so Al’s shoutiness over small matters was hard to endure.

Our therapist helped me to understand that this doesn’t mean anything serious, and that raised voices in Al’s family are just another means of communication. When Al and his brothers built me a new roof extension, the arguments were deafening and passionate at the time, but a day later were forgotten.

He gave me a £14 ring from M&S when we got engaged... but at least he knows how to change a fuse

Six tumultuous years later, during which china has been smashed and I have regularly thrown his clothes out into the street (if you are shopping in the Kings Road and get swamped by an avalanche of mismatched socks floating down from the rooftops, you know who to blame), we are still together and still very much in love, but constantly battling with the friction caused by our different backgrounds and economic circumstances.

I discussed this with a therapist, Brad Hartley, who sees couples from different backgrounds all the time. The best way to reconcile the two, he says, is to realise that ‘it’s not you two who are arguing — it’s the beliefs you grew up with, and internalised, that are competing. ‘I always tell my clients not to judge the other person. It’s the different scripts that are fighting.’

Brad helped me to see that it was our
backgrounds, and the rules we were brought up with, that were clashing,
and our arguments didn’t necessarily mean we were totally imcompatible. When we are stripped of the differences caused by our opposing backgrounds, essentially we are quite similar.

Joan Collins's daughter Tara Newley (pictured) had a love affair with a roofer

We are both dog-mad and besotted with our 14-year-old Sheltie. We both grew up in the Sixties and share an enthusiasm for The Beatles and Dad’s Army. We both practise Buddhism and are active members of our local Buddhist group.

But money issues still worry me. His dwindling construction pension, which he hasn’t contributed to for years, is a source of anxiety. The thought of sailing into old age with no real provision makes me shake with terror. My family are keen savers, and I benefit financially from their astute investments, but it’s not a bottomless well.

Now he’s in his mid-50s, Al’s working life is slowing down. He is bored of the building trade, which involves getting up at the crack of dawn to perform back-breaking, exhausting and dusty work. Unlike me, he is not ambitious and wants us to relax, go to the pub for lunch, and take things easy.

If he was with a woman with no money, would he be forced to carry on working — and discover, to his surprise, how satisfying it could still be? Would he have found a lucrative sideline? He is a talented artist, and had some success as an actor before we met. I fear my comfortable lifestyle, which he shares, is destroying his hunter-gatherer instincts. After all, necessity is the mother of invention. For the moment, though, we have come to an agreement and he is now renovating my flat. I am happy to pay him ‘mates rates’.

Employing your boyfriend may be unorthodox, and friends express disapproval that he isn’t doing it for free, but it works for us, for now. The two of us have fumbled our way to a compromise about money, but typically it’s still awkward when a woman has more money than a man — as is the case with us — and the resulting relationships are more often than not disastrous.

Take one of my close female relatives,
who married a handsome but unsuccessful businessman. Living off her
money, and in her house, destroyed his self-respect. Eventually he lost
interest in life, retreated to his study and methodically drank himself
to death.

Employing your boyfriend may be unorthodox, and friends express disapproval that he isn’t doing it for free...

I remember the fanfare with which Joan Collins’s daughter began a love affair with a roofer; but that soon fizzled out. In fact, I simply can’t think of any successful role models of wealthy women hitched to working men. But I am following a family pattern. My mother, a wealthy heiress, married the son of an East End Cockney — a union that survived eight years before ending in divorce. Their expectations and different upbringings proved insurmountable. I’m just hoping that Al and I prove the exception to the rule.

If we had met earlier, our relationship wouldn’t have survived. In my 20s, I was materialistic. Now, in my 40s, I have no interest in fancy jewellery, expensive meals out or flash cars. When we got engaged three years ago, it was sealed by a £14 ring from Marks & Spencer’s — a bauble that I treasure. When an acquaintance made a sneering comment about it, it sailed right over my head.

We are determined to make our relationship work, and thanks to the Relate counselling sessions we’ve started attending, we now understand each other better. And whenever I have a wobble, I remind myself that Al is sincere, faithful and thinks the world of me. And these are qualities you can’t put a price on.

Letting Go Of The Glitz: One Woman’s Struggle To Live A Simple Life In Chelsea, now out in paperback (Crown House, £7.99).